At the beginning of the 19th century, in Guastalla as elsewhere in the Po Valley - a town then under French rule and later governed by the Duchy of Parma and Piacenza - the Napoleonic Law prohibiting burials inside churches and towns was introduced. To comply with this regulation, the area near the recently suppressed Capuchin Convent was designated as a burial site.

That choice was likely due to the fact that the convent, unlike all others in Guastalla, stood outside the town walls. After 1840, the original convent structure - of which only a small portion beside the adjoining church survived - was expanded with the addition of a new portico, still standing today. It features 86 arches along the northern, eastern and western sides of the cemetery, framing a vast central field.

Within the cemetery, a strict hierarchy governed burial places: the “spazi distinti” (Eng., distinguished spaces) offered greater visibility to monuments and were therefore placed under the arches of the portico or - within the central field - along the main path, or later along the secondary ones. Consequently, the graves of common people were set in grassy fields, while the elaborate tombs of wealthier individuals occupied the cemetery’s “priority lanes”. From this perspective, this cemetery became the mirror of the livings’ society - a faithful reflection of the socio-economic order of the community itself.

In 1847, only a handful of inscriptions were recorded in the graveyard; today there are more than 600, dating up to 1920. Together they represent an invaluable record of the social, religious and economic history of the area. Precisely for this reason, the project CIMITero (a play on the word cimitero - “cemetery” - and the Italian ending -ero, “I was”, which conveys the philosophical meaning “I was, therefore I am”), was launched. Its goal is to raise awareness among younger generations and the wider community of this memorial site, rich in traces of Guastalla’s past.